Police Blotter: October 5 – 11, 2011

Three times out
A suspect in the Sept. 26 robbery of the Sovereign Bank branch at 2 Gold St. was arrested after he hit the place for a third time on Wednesday, Sept. 28, for a total of $26,000.

Charles Burnett, 29, with a record of two previous misdemeanor arrests, was charged with three counts of robbery. At 9:20 a.m. Monday, Sept. 26 he put a brown paper bag on a teller’s counter, handed over a note saying “put the money in the bag. I have a gun,” and fled with $2,258, police said. He returned at 10:54 a.m. the next day and fled with $14,000 after threatening a teller he would shoot her in the face if she didn’t give him all the money, police said. On Wednesday, Sept.28 he came back a third time and passed a note saying “I have a gun put all the money in the bag.” Two officers recognized him from a wanted poster and him as he was leaving with about $10,000, according to court documents.

Burnett was described as 6’1” and about 275 lbs. in a New York Post article, which also said he was recently released from a mental institution somewhere in the South. Burnett used the money from the Sept. 26 robbery to book a room in the Grand Hyatt on E. 42nd Street and Grand Central, according to the New York Post article.

Tickets Tickets Tickets
A Queens man carrying a bag of printed tickets was getting into his car parked in front of 224 Front St. in the South Street Seaport around 11:25 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 2 when a man brandishing a black handgun demanded, “Give me the bag, give me the bag, give me the bag,” police said. An accomplice on a motorcycle drove up and the gunman grabbed the bag and got on the back. The robbers made a U-urn and sped west on Peck Slip, police said. The bag had 300 Watertaxi tickets, 200 Top of the Rock tickets, 200 Tussaud’s Wax Museum tickets and 700 Intrepid Sea/Air Museum tickets, with a total value of $6,400.

Cell phones lifted
Two suspects walked into the Verizon store at 102 Fulton St. around 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, took two cell phones from a display case and fled without paying for them. The phones, valued at $699 each, were store demonstration models and wee activated for use, police said.

Subway dipper
A Staten Island man, 23, got on a crowded train at the Whitehall St. station around 12:20 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 1 and lost the wallet from his back pocket with $133 and credit cards and his cell phone to a pickpocket, police said.

Dump truck gone
A dump truck parked at a construction site on the northeast corner of Leonard and Varick Sts. at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29 was discovered stolen an hour later, police said. The truck was valued at $50,000.

Booked on book theft
The man arrested on Sept. 26 for trying to sell books he reportedly stole from public library branches to a bookshop in the East Village, was also charged in an earlier theft of 11 books from the Battery Park City Public Library on North End Ave.

Andrew Hansen, 27, with a long record of library book thefts, was arrested on Sept. 21 in connection with the Battery Park City library theft. He is also a suspect in two other library thefts for which he has not yet been charged, according to reports.

On Monday, Sept. 26, he tried to sell stolen library books to East Village Books, 99 St. Marks Pl., but the owner held him for police. Hansen, who was also arrested in July for trying to steal books from the Tompkins Sq. library branch, is barred from the library system and from Strand Books on Broadway and E. 12th Street. In September 2009 he was arrested in Union Sq. for ripping labels out of stolen library books and in November 2009 he was arrested for shoplifting in the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Union Square, according to reports.

Burglary attempt
Three men in a mini van tried to beak into the Miu Miu clothing boutique at 100 Prince St. around 12:55 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 29 but after two tries with a crow bar, they failed to enter the place and drove off. Police said a witness saw two men, one wearing a facemask and the other wearing a hooded sweatshirt, get out of the van. One of them smashed the front door glass with the crowbar. The van then backed up to the door, and the two men put a blue plastic garbage can nearby and tried to pry open a lock at the bottom of the door. They failed to break the lock, left the garbage can and sped away north on Greene Street. The attempt was part of a citywide burglary pattern, police said.

Comfortable seat
A woman patron of Greenhouse, 150 Varick St., told police she left the place very drunk around 4:10 a.m. Tuesday, Sept.27 when a stranger told her there was a comfortable place to sit around the corner on Vandam Street. Once off Varick Street, the man took her cell phone and fled, police said. She discovered later that day that 10 unauthorized calls were made on the phone.

Scattered contents
A New Jersey woman, 28, told police she was with friends at Toad Hall, the bar at 57 Grand St., shortly after midnight on Saturday, Oct. 1 and left her bag on a hook under the bar while she went out for a smoke. When she returned, she found that someone had scattered the contents of her bag on the bar. She gathered everything, put it all back in her bag, but didn’t notice until after she got home that her wallet with ID and credit cards was missing. Several unauthorized charges were made on the cards.